Wallachian Gazette

🇷🇴🤝🇹🇷 Defense minister, Angel Tîlvăr met with his Turkish counterpart, Yaşar Güler and the commander of the Turkish Navy, Admiral Ercüment Tatlıoğlu.

They toured the Istanbul Shipyard Command meaning that the Romanian MoD is likely interested in acquiring some Turkish ships.

The ship industry in Romania took a big hit after the Dutch company, Damen Holding B.V. decided to leave the Mangalia shipyard following a blunder committed by the ministry of the economy, laying off its employees and returning the shipyard into the hands of the Romanian state who struggled to find orders before selling the shipyard to Damen in 2018.

Damen only retains the shipyard at Galați which it continuously expands. It successfully built a number of search & rescue ships for the Romanian Coast Guard and plans to build a ”drone carrier” for the Portuguese Navy. Damen has built at Galați a lot of ships for other navies, like the Pakistani Navy for which it built two corvettes, the Dutch navy for which it built a Combat-Support Ship (CSS) and a Joint Support Ship (JSS).

The Romanian Navy to make up for the lost capacity in the shipbuilding sector has resorted to buying old ships from other countries and refitting them with newer systems, like the two Sandown class minehunters and the two frigates bought from the UK. Last time we've heard from the navy was when it decided it wanted to build two brand new offshore patrol vessels (OPV) and jointly purchase with other EU members a planned new generation of corvettes believed to be ready past 2030.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🟨🤝❓🇭🇺 AUR co-founder and leader of its Brussels delegation, Claudiu Târziu, told POLITICO that he and AUR are open to dialogue with Fidesz and will not oppose their request to enter the ECR group if Fidesz desires.

Târziu said that Fidesz's outburst came from a lack of communication between the two parties.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/hungarys-mega-presidency-or-just-meh/

🇪🇺🗳⚡️ — 🇩🇪📰 German state news agency, DPA Intl on X (Twitter):

EU leaders negotiating the bloc's top jobs have agreed to nominate Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as European Commission president, sources in the talks tell dpa.

🔗 Deutsche Presse-Agentur

🇷🇺❌🇷🇴📺 Russia will add several TV stations from the EU to its ban list and among them are three Romanian channels:

🔹 Pro TV
🔹Digi24
🔹B1 TV

Noteworthy to remember that the EU banned at the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russian outlets like RussiaToday (RT), Sputnik and just yesterday enacted a ban on Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, and Izvestiya.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🟨📰🗯 AUR affiliated online magazine, RostOnline, explained the decision of the party to join the ECR group with a mixed response from the audience:

In short, AUR joined the ECR because it is the largest ”socially conservative” faction in the European Parliament, arguing that the Identity & Democracy bloc was ”too small” to make a difference and that the ID group exists to ”make noise and start scandals” which the party is more than happy to let its rival, Diana Șoșoacă and S.O.S. România to pick this role.

RostOnline argues that, AUR with its 6 MEPs can better focus on ideas and even as ECR members, they can still vote freely, with the newspaper saying it will ”wait and see before denouncing the MEPs”.

📝 It will be hard for AUR to resist in the ECR considering the voter base they have which is: anti-Ukraine because Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina and economically left-wing. Recently, across Romania, ads have popped up with AUR promising to ”remove interest rates” from loans and promising fixed price houses/apartments which is not far from the economic policy of the Romanian Communist Party. ECR is an economically liberal capitalist grouping, so sooner or later, AUR will be faced with a dire choice: either lose the voters to Diana Șoșoacă and S.O.S. România who has remained consistent over the years (unlike AUR) and stay with the ECR or leave it for something else while retaining voters. Luckily for AUR, they have an alternative in the Nationalist-Left-wing group rumoured to be in the works, headed by the ex-SPD (Germany) member, Sahra Wagenknecht, who is anti-migration, anti-continuing to support Ukraine and economically left-wing.

🔗 https://t.me/revistaRost/4200

🇷🇴⚔️🇷🇺 22.06.1941 | The crusade against communism!

On June 22nd 1941, Operation Munchen commences! A joint German-Romanian Army attacks in the early hours the soviet units in occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina.

For the first week of the operation, fighting concentrated along the Danube river in the Danube Delta and Southern Bessarabia. The Soviets initially tried to counterattack with a naval invasion at Chilia Veche and a sea and air raid on Constanța both failing with the one on Constanța being especially a nasty defeat, resulting in one destroyer sunk, 9 bombers shot down for minimal damage on the port itself. In this raid, Romania earned its first war hero, pilot Horia Agarici shooting down 3 of the bombers with his IAR-80 fighter-bomber aircraft.

The main push would begin on July 2nd with the Romanian army crossing the Pruth river at Ripiceni-Corpani-Cuconești in the Botoșani-Edineț area and further south at Costuleni and Bogdănești-Stoianovca (Stoenești before the sovietization of Moldova). The next day, the push towards Cernăuți in Bucovina begins. Storojineț is taken on the same day, Cernăuți is captured on July 5th with the soviet armies withdrawing from Bukovina and northern Bessarabia following defeats up north near Rivne in Western Ukraine. By July 7th, the Dniester was reached with Bukovina and much of Northern Bessarabia having been liberated.

It would take 3 more weeks until Bessarabia was fully liberated but the battle itself was over after Chișinău was freed. Operation Munchen would officially end on July 26th, a resounding success.

🇺🇸🤝🇷🇴 Romania and the United States signed a memorandum on combating disinformation!

The document says that consultations will occur periodically between the two parties, will develop jointly strategies to combat disinformation, will promote the "independent press", the civil society and academia to combat disinformation.

🔗 Secretary Antony Blinken